


to love the thing that hurts you

by poppyseedheart



Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Grand Theft Auto Setting, Canon-Typical Violence, Captivity, M/M, Mind Control, Mind Control Aftermath & Recovery, Multi, Other minor characters - Freeform, Rescue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-19
Updated: 2018-04-19
Packaged: 2019-04-25 04:16:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,343
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14370711
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/poppyseedheart/pseuds/poppyseedheart
Summary: Jeremy pulls uselessly at his bonds. “You can’t, Geoff, please. I don’t know what they did to you but you gotta fight it- you have to-please.”“You poor fuckin’ thing,” is all Geoff says, and he turns and walks out of the room without another word.orJeremy gets captured. He recognizes his interrogator. It doesn't get easier from there.





	to love the thing that hurts you

**Author's Note:**

> Oh hey! This was originally a prompt on tumblr and I, a slowpoke, took forever and made it much longer than I anticipated. What can you do.
> 
> Heed the tags! If you have questions about any of the warnings, you can reach me at teamokdynamite on tumblr :)
> 
> Enjoy!

Jeremy startles awake when the door to his current accommodations slams open, and his first instinct is to let his shoulders slump in relief. “Geoff,” he says, breathes it like a prayer. He’s been in here for almost two weeks, weak from the scarce rations and from being tied down for most of that time.

Geoff is not storming in guns blazing, though. There are no explosion sounds or raucous laughter like he’d usually hear accompanying a Fake AH Crew rescue op. It’s a strange kind of quiet and the hairs on Jeremy’s arms start to stand up at how uneasy he feels.

“Geoff?” asks Jeremy, hesitant now.

Geoff smiles, sharp, all teeth. Smiles like the crime boss that climbed his way to the top of this jagged city. Smiles like _hate_.

“Sorry,” he says, and he doesn’t sound sorry at all, “were you sleeping?”

The words echo against the walls of this place. Jeremy is pretty sure it’s a storage container somewhere, on the pier maybe, but it’s so hard to tell. “What are you doing here?” he asks. Some part of him is scared to hear the answer.

“The boss man has some questions,” answers Geoff easily, leaning against one of the walls. He’s unarmed, perfectly nonchalant even as he cuts a deeply imposing figure. “He thought I’d have a good chance at getting ‘em from you. What do you think? Tongue feeling looser?”

“Boss man? I don’t- He’s getting you to get me to betray you?” asks Jeremy, trying to wrap his head around it.

Geoff’s eyes are still glittering like sharp stone. “Oh, he doesn’t need anything about the Fakes anymore. We want to hear about your friends over in that little apartment on Willow Street. Ninth floor, with the big windows? What’re they up to in there?”

Jeremy goes cold. “Geoff, you don’t wanna ask me about that.”

“Of course I do, buddy. And you want to answer me, especially if you like having all ten fingers. It’s your way or mine.”

Jeremy is breathing hard, disbelief starting to make way for a dull kind of horror. None of this felt like a joke, but it’s all too real now. Even if Jeremy breaks out somehow, what’s he gonna do? Look the guy that plucked him off the street and gave him a home and a family right in the eyes before shooting him in the head? Real fuckin’ likely. 

But he can’t give up Trevor and Matt and the assortment of strays they tend to harbor every now again. He grew up into the man he is today because of them.

Panic creeps into his bloodstream. “I can’t,” he says, and his voice sounds high and strained. “Geoff, you know I can’t.”

Geoff squeezes Jeremy’s shoulder once, incongruously gentle, and Jeremy closes his eyes and tries to pretend he’s anywhere else. “You seem worked up,” observes Geoff. “You scared? You’re not usually scared.”

Jeremy is never going to tell anyone, but he’s frozen with terror. He thinks desperately to the morning of the heist where he was taken, but everything keeps blurring together into incomprehensible mush. How did Geoff get here? What did they do to him? Is it all some big act?

But Geoff wouldn’t threaten Willow Street. Not even as a joke, Jeremy is sure of that.

“A question for a question,” offers Jeremy, trying to keep his voice level.

Geoff raises an eyebrow. “You’re bargaining? From that chair? Ballsy, kid.”

It is ballsy, but Geoff is a fundamentally fair person, even when his eyes look edged with cruelty the way they do now. “Yes.”

“Huh.” Geoff pauses, then smiles. “Alright, sure. You know me, can’t resist a challenge. I’ll go first. Who’s the tall one? Looks like Trevor, but if Trevor was cuter and tripped less.”

Jeremy has a few options here. The first option is to lie, and hope to god Fredo is smart enough to cover his tracks. He probably is, but if Jeremy gets caught in the lie, then everything gets worse very quickly. He doesn’t know how he’d react if Geoff laid hands on him. Doesn’t want to think about what that might do to the better memories Jeremy has of the crew, or his trust moving forward, if there is a forward at all.

The second option is to tell the truth, and expose his friends to an enemy Jeremy doesn’t even know.

He goes with option three. “I’ll answer something else. Not that, I can’t answer that.”

Geoff smiles. “Waiting for the cavalry to sweep in and save you? The cavalry’s here already, and no one’s untying you until we get some answers. If you’re trying to buy time, fine, we have nothing _but_ time.”

“Geoff,” pleads Jeremy again, repeats it like a prayer, some desperate instinct to entreat to him rising up from his soft parts. “Geoff, please, why are you doing this? What did they do to you?”

“A question for a question,” says Geoff. “That was the bargain.”

“He’s just a freelancer. From out of town, he probably won’t even stay long. He’s starting out the way I did, and then he’ll move on.” It comes out too fast for Jeremy to take it back, and he feels his face go lax with surprise at himself, enough of a dead giveaway that he’s being honest.

Geoff lights up. “Now that’s more like it. I still want a name, but I can be patient. That’s plenty helpful, kid.”

Fuck. _Fuck_. “What happened to you?” asks Jeremy, trying to tilt things toward even, but there’s no balance to be found in a situation like this.

Geoff shrugs. “They scooped me up and showed me what I was missing. I’m fuzzy on some of the details, but the boss man said he spared ‘em for my own good. So far the gig’s been pretty sweet, honestly. Can’t complain.”

“You have to fight it.”

Geoff laughs.

It was worth a shot, figures Jeremy, though his heart is already sinking to his stomach. What’s he supposed to do here? What’s the right answer? Geoff will ply the answers out of him easy as anything, and probably shoot Jeremy when he’s done without an ounce of regret.

“Another question?” asks Geoff.

Jeremy sighs, doesn’t see another way. “Fine. But I’m going first this time.”

Geoff gestures a _go ahead_ with his hands, stepping back to give Jeremy the figurative floor.

“Where are the others?”

It’s like a chill goes through the room. Geoff’s expression does a few strange things before settling back into the hard, cocky amusement he’s been wearing through most of this encounter. “They’re all here. They brought Gav in with me, the others are probably in the same predicament you’ve found yourself in.”

“So Gavin is-”

“Yeeup,” drawls Geoff. His face is still doing that weird flickering thing. “You might even get to see him soon if you’re lucky. Or unlucky, I guess, depending on how you look at it. Anyway, you owe me an answer now. What do your buddies need a tank for?”

“A tank?” Jeremy is sure he heard wrong.

But Geoff just nods. “That’s what I said. They’ve been poking around, bugging some of my sources about acquiring one. What do they want with it?”

“I don’t know,” blurts out Jeremy, too bewildered to lie. “They never mentioned anything, I don’t- I don’t even know where to start with that.”

Geoff tsks. He tilts Jeremy’s chin up with one incongruously gentle finger. “You can do better than that, come on.”

“I swear,” says Jeremy. He’s not above begging. It’s always struck an awful primal chord in him when Geoff was disappointed. 

“You don’t wanna talk,” answers Geoff. “I get it, I’ve been there. I really don’t want to have to hurt you, though. Or ask Gavin to hurt one of the others.”

Jeremy pulls uselessly at his bonds. “You can’t, Geoff, please. I don’t know what they did to you but you gotta fight it- you have to- _please_.”

“You poor fuckin’ thing,” is all Geoff says, and he turns and walks out of the room without another word.

/

A few hours later, some rent-a-goons come in and untie him. He’s still locked in a cell, but he gets to choose when takes a piss, and they start bringing him food more regularly. Jeremy is tired, but not too tired to be suspicious.

No one comes in for the rest of the day, though. It leaves Jeremy to stew, mostly, and try not to panic. And then, when he’s fitfully trying to get to sleep on the cold, concrete floor, he hears the yelling start.

It might be easier to handle if Michael didn’t have such a goddamn distinctive voice.

Jeremy figures Gavin is in there. He doesn’t know who else it could be, really, to make Michael sound so hurt under the anger. “How could you?” Michael shouts, loud like it’s tearing its way out of his throat. “How fucking dare you?”

There’s a murmur in response, and then the yelling comes back even louder. “You piece of shit! You’re a spineless fucking coward. We _trusted_ you!”

More murmuring, and then the sound of a door scraping open slowly, and then dead silence.

 

Jeremy shudders.

/

He sees Gavin next. Gavin with his jaunty smile, teasing light in his eyes, so terrifying when he’s weaponized. Jeremy has never really been on the opposite side of a fight. Knowing that Gavin is all limbs and has a goofy laugh does nothing to make him feel less dread in the moment.

“Hello, Lil’ J.”

Jeremy clears his throat. “Hi, Gav.”

“I’m still Gav to you, huh? You’re nicer than Michael was. He stopped talking to me altogether after we brought Ryan in.”

The three of them are dating. _Were_ dating, maybe. Jeremy’s stomach turns imagining what that must have been like for Michael and Ryan, and he wonders if there’s a Gavin in there under the slick smirk that was yelling, too, through the encounter, maybe even louder than Michael was. Wonders if Geoff is still in there, too. It hadn’t seemed like it.

“Why’d they bring you into my space?” asks Jeremy. “I’m not giving anything else up, and I know you’re not in your right mind, pal. You might’ve fooled Michael, maybe even Ryan, but not me.”

It’s a risky play, but Gavin seems unfazed. “No fooling to be done here! Just wanted to catch up, see how you were doing.”

Jeremy rolls his eyes. “Pretty bad,” he says, voice completely flat, “seeing as I’m being held in captivity by my former colleagues.”

“Come on, we were at least friends, weren’t we?”

“Gavin,” says Jeremy, quieter now. He’s so fucking tired. His wrists are raw, his ass is sore from being forced to sit for so long, and his head has been aching since he woke up here almost three weeks ago now. “What do you want?”

“You could join us, you know,” says Gavin. It sounds like he’s musing, like he’s distracted, but Jeremy knows better than to trust him when he’s like this. “Me and Geoff, I mean. It would get you out of captivity, for starters. And we could keep doing what we were doing before, just with better resources, more manpower, the support of a whole other team…just think about it, Jeremy.”

“I’m not buying what you’re selling.”

“But you could.”

Gavin’s voice is dangerously soft and Jeremy realizes now what the point of this was. They know they can’t brute force Jeremy into agreeing, but maybe they can use his friends against him. It certainly feels like it would be easiest to crumble and let them convince him to jump ship on the Fakes, especially knowing how hopeless the situation really is. It’s been weeks, and there hasn’t been a single hint of a disturbance in this place. Wherever they are, it must be hidden well to have all of them so sequestered from the view of anyone who might be trying to break them out.

But Jeremy did not give his life to this crew for nothing. He’ll be used against his friends until all of them are mindless robots.

“Fuck that,” he says. It’s so vehement even Gavin looks startled.

Admittedly, it’s not usually very hard to startle Gavin. “If you change your mind,” says Gavin after a moment, “then I know where to find you.”

Jeremy sighs, hangs his head. “Yeah, pal. You sure do.”

/

They stop sending Gavin in after that.

Over the next few days, Geoff works carefully to pry information out of Jeremy, some of it seemingly just to prove he can. He learns more about Jeremy’s upbringing, about his family, about his likes and dislikes.

It’s all the worse because Jeremy has always thrived under Geoff’s attention, blooming like a flower just to make him smile.

It feels deeply unfair that this is the most interested Geoff has ever been in him.

Finally, after almost a week of prolonged interrogation, Jeremy snaps. “I’m done,” he says when Geoff walks in. “I can’t do this anymore. I’m finished.”

Geoff cocks an unimpressed brow. “You know what’ll get you out of that chair.”

“I don’t need to get up,” answers Jeremy, “I just need to be left the fuck alone. I’m _done_.”

Geoff must see something in his expression, because he pats Jeremy’s cheek and says, “Alright, I’ll see you tomorrow then.” As he leaves, one of the countless nameless grunts around here walks in and unties Jeremy, leaving a tray of food by his makeshift cot before exiting.

A few weeks earlier, Jeremy would have fought for control of the guy’s gun and tried to bust out of here single-handedly, but now Jeremy is all too aware of what he’d be leaving behind. So instead he sits on the cot with his head in his hands until he can bring himself to eat the stale food he’s supposed to call dinner.

/

Jeremy has no clue what day it is—not even what time, for that matter—when the door to his container is blown open with a quiet pop. By his estimate, he’s been in here for almost a month, but as the days wore on it got hard to tell.

“Are you okay? Jeremy?”

He cracks his eyes open, groggy from general exhaustion. “Jack?”

Jack nods, checking over his shoulder before slowly closing the door again and making his way to Jeremy. “We were worried fucking sick about you guys,” he says as he works at Jeremy’s restraints. They’d tied him back up after he called Geoff a rude motherfucker.

Jeremy’s arms feel numb, his ass sore, his legs wobbly. “I’m fine,” he says, “they didn’t touch me. Not really.”

“You don’t look fine,” observes Jack.

Jeremy lets it bounce right off of him. “What about the others?”

“Lindsay’s got Michael and Ryan. I think Funhaus is dealing with Geoff, and we called Burnie in to deal with Gav. If anyone can get through to him, it’s probably Burnie, and if not he can just knock Gavin out and we’ll deal with it later.”

The weakness in Jeremy’s knees is part relief, part disuse. “So you know what happened?”

Jack grimaces. “A little, yeah. Steffie outdid herself pulling strings so we could figure out where the hell you guys were. When Matt hacked into the cameras, he saw Geoff working with their boss, and we had to rethink our plans. A lot.”

They head up to the door, backs pressed against it. “Guards?” asks Jeremy.

“Mostly dealt with.”

Guards getting dealt with usually means Alfredo got sent in first to mow through them, which is reassuring.

Jeremy is still moving slowly, but his limbs are warming up the longer he’s on his feet, and when Jack slips a gun into Jeremy’s hand he feels more himself than he has since he was brought here in the first place. “How did you even get away in the first place?” asks Jeremy.

“I saw you all get thrown into a van, and unlike Ryan, who ran back into the fray like an asshole martyr, I cut my losses and regrouped with everyone who was left.” Jack’s tone is even. He’s rock solid. Jeremy missed him a lot.

From there, the conversation quiets as they make their way through the area, cutting down the remaining guards as they go. Jeremy’s guess had been correct—it’s a maze of shipping containers, mostly empty, and the noise of the ocean makes it easier for them to get away with the little pops of their silenced guns. By the time Jeremy piles into the helicopter behind Jack, they’re just waiting for the others to arrive.

He’s tearing into a burger—thank Christ, honestly—when James Willems pokes his head up over the side of the chopper’s opening. “Hey, Geoff’s out cold. Kovic is going to load him up, but he’s all yours from here. Good luck.”

“You guys okay?” asks Jack.

“Mostly fine,” answers James, but he’s wincing. “We think Elyse’s collarbone is broken, and Peake might have a concussion, but they’ll heal up. We’re more worried about Geoff.”

Jack nods. “We’ve got him.”

It won’t be easy, Jeremy knows. Jack loves Geoff as a brother, but Jack isn’t second in command for nothing. He can make the hard choices when he has to, and he will.

“Thanks,” says Jeremy.

James just gives him a nod before heading back over the side and waving Adam up.

Geoff is out like a light, lump on his head and chest rising and falling slowly with his breathing. Jeremy is not proud of the fear that rises in his gut when he sees Geoff, even knowing what happened wasn’t Geoff’s fault. He can’t get that cruel smile out of his head.

Thankfully, Lindsay arrives with Michael and Ryan just a few seconds after, and they seem surprised to see Geoff at all. “Is he okay?” asks Michael. “Are you, Jeremy? What the fuck happened?”

Lindsay surreptitiously heads to the front of the chopper, probably taking over piloting from Trevor. Jeremy wants to talk to both of them, but everyone is looking at him, waiting. “I don’t even know how to answer that,” says Jeremy, feeling very overwhelmed all of a sudden. “I- I’m fine. And he- I think-“ he looks to Jack.

Jack takes over smoothly. “We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it, and once we see if Gavin has been un-brainwashed.”

“Brainwashed?” It’s Ryan that asks. He and Michael have both gone pale.

A rap on the metal body of the helicopter makes them all jump before Jack can answer him. “Delivery!” yells Burnie. “Also, you’re welcome, all the guards and most of the higher ups here are fucking dead. I know because I checked.”

Jeremy can see all of their reflections in Burnie’s sunglasses. It’s a sorry sight. And then he looks behind Burnie, and he sees Gavin looking more sober than Jeremy has ever seen him in the years they’ve known each other.

Burnie helps him up, and Gavin climbs in without a word. His expression goes alarmed once he sees Geoff unconscious, and it shutters when he sees everyone else. Jack climbs out of the chopper to talk to Burnie, and it just leaves the five of them in there, all pretty fucked up from everything that happened.

Gavin is too twitchy and curled in on himself for Jeremy to get a good look at him. “Are you hurt?” asks Jeremy.

Gavin’s eyes are still as wide as saucers. He shakes his head mutely.

“Okay,” says Jeremy, mostly to himself. He looks up after taking a second just to breathe. “You two?”

“They didn’t touch me,” says Michael.

Ryan shrugs a shoulder, which is alarming. “It’s my knee,” he explains, bending it and wincing. “I was a little rowdy when they tried to bring me in at first, and I think it healed a little messed up. It’s fine, though.”

Michael shifts closer to him. Gavin stays exactly where he is.

Jack gets back in the chopper, and then they’re off. Geoff doesn’t wake up in the fifteen minutes it takes them to get home, and no one says a word about that or anything else.

/

Jeremy is sitting in the kitchen staring at the full glass of whiskey that he’d poured himself almost an hour prior when Geoff wakes up.

He starts twisting around on the couch, wrapping the blanket that had been gently draped over him around his legs in what looks to be panic. “Gavin?” calls Geoff, and it turns out that he doesn’t just look panicked, but he sounds panicked, too. “Fuck, my head- fuckin’-“

“Geoff?” asks Jeremy. He notices distantly that his own hands are shaking in his lap. “How’re you feeling?”

There are footsteps in the hallway, and then Gavin appears in the room. “Geoff, I’m fine.” Gavin’s voice is creaky from disuse and colored with emotion. “We’re home. We’re not there anymore.”

The emotions that flicker across Geoff’s face then are unfamiliar, and all the scarier for it. “We can’t be here.”

“It’s okay,” insists Gavin. He hasn’t moved from the doorway. Jeremy is frozen at the dining table.

Geoff sits up, tearing the blanket off of him with a feral kind of viciousness. “It’s not. What happened? How’d we even get here?”

“Are you good?” asks Gavin insistently. “We’re not under their control anymore. Right?”

“Fuck, my head hurts. Yeah, I’m fuckin’ good, but I’m having a hard time remembering what even happened.”

“Okay. We need to talk about it.” Gavin is still so sober, so severe. It’s uncanny to see him acting like this when he only used to get so serious in play.

Geoff leans against the couch, head propped up to look at Gavin over the back of it. “Alright, then. Tell me how bad it was.”

Gavin sighs, and Jeremy makes a decision. “I’ll give you two a minute,” he says, and more or less bolts out of the room before either of them can properly acknowledge him. He ends up in the surveillance office, where he finds Matt going through the arduous process of scrubbing security footage from every camera that might have caught their helicopter journey from the docks.

Matt doesn’t even look up, engrossed in his work, and Jeremy collapses onto the couch behind him and tries to get the shaking to stop.

/

Lindsay is the one that encourages Jeremy to heal in a way that’s healthy. She makes him cook dinner with her, ensuring that he eats enough; she wakes him up in the mornings when he’d rather just sleep all day; and she brings him out to jobs as a lookout. He insists at first that he’s still too nervous to take watch, but she cheerfully ignores him, and he does feel better once he gets back on the horse, so to speak.

It’s not Jeremy that the others need to be worried about, anyway. He’s a little traumatized, sure, but you don’t get into this line of work without some kind of trauma already serving as a building block for the rest of your life. He’ll have to work on sitting down and having a conversation with Geoff that doesn’t make him feel sick inside, scared and twitchy and keeping an eye on the exits, but he thinks he’ll get there with enough time.

No, it’s Geoff and Gavin that are worst off. It’s not really surprising, considering the circumstances. Jeremy himself doesn’t know how he’d bear dealing with the fallout of something like this knowing he was on the other side.

Gavin takes to standing around at the edges of rooms, quiet and uncomfortable and not unlike a ghost. Jeremy doesn’t think he’s reconciled with Michael yet, and can’t tell with Ryan because Ryan’s been gone so much.

Geoff has just been absent. This is, ostensibly, his penthouse, but he went on a few shopping runs with Jack when he got back and hasn’t stayed in the house for longer than a few minutes when he’s not sleeping.

“I’m worried about him,” Jack confides in Jeremy nearly two weeks after they’ve all returned.

Jeremy frowns. “Me too.”

/

The next morning, Jeremy comes downstairs for breakfast and pretends not to notice that Michael, Gavin, and Ryan are all sitting very close to each other, and Michael’s eyes are red like he’s been crying.

“Morning,” says Ryan, more chipper than Jeremy has seen him in months.

“Morning,” answers Jeremy, and then takes a risk. “You guys didn’t bang in here, did you?”

Thankfully, they all laugh. “Not recently,” says Gavin, and Jeremy takes that as a cue to pick up a pancake from the table and lob it at Gavin’s smug, awful, delightful face.

/

Jeremy finds Geoff on the roof that evening, staring out at the city.

“Hi,” says Jeremy when Geoff doesn’t look up.

No answer.

Jeremy sits next to him, legs safely not hanging off the side. “You know, I think we’re gonna be okay,” he offers. “Gav’s doing better, and we’re pretty much ready to move forward. Just waiting on you, boss.”

Geoff huffs a laugh. It doesn’t sound like he finds anything particularly funny. “You’ll be waiting a while, then.”

“Right now I just want you to come inside,” says Jeremy. His hands are not shaking. “We’re having a movie night tonight with everyone who’s around.”

More quiet. There’s a breeze up here, and Jeremy leans back and shuts his eyes. He knows patience. Has had to learn it. This is nothing compared to the days he spent waiting for something back in that shipping container, or the stakeouts he’s been on with Lindsay just in the last few days.

Finally, Geoff cracks. “Fine,” he says, a forced casual note to his tone. “But if Ryan drank all the Diet Coke, I’m out.”

It’s an empty threat, so Jeremy laughs.

As they walk down to join the others, he’s not frightened at all.

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! <3


End file.
